Blame it on the media.

• Author: Cammarota, Aldo
• Position: Fast news transmission

It's not that the world is in worse shape than before. The problem is that news reports are better than ever. Through newspapers, magazines, radio and television, one learns about more things that happen in more places faster all the time.

Nowadays within a 24-hour span more things occur in the world than occurred during a 24-year span in our grandparents' time. And we are informed about everything that happens. One may be cruising in a car during a placid, sun-kissed morning when suddenly the newscaster's voice explodes in the radio: Special report! The noquinoqui troops have rebelled in Polynesia! There is agitation in the Himalaya! A violent fire in the Arctic! Miss Bermuda Triangle has changed her sex!

Life was much more serene until this past century. Then, nobody knew anything. The 1789 French Revolution influenced Latin Americans only after 1805. Now, Bush and Gorbachev meet in London and two minutes later the whole world knows what brand of ketchup the American sprinkled on his Russian caviar. During the time when Spain ruled the world, the Duke of the Pelusa lost all his possessions in Castile, but his family continued to live in luxury and splendor in Cochabamba because word of the Duke's bankruptcy travelled by caravel and it took three years to get there. Today, you have the lousy luck of bouncing a check due to lack of funds in a bank of Hong Kong and 60 seconds later the computer has informed all the banks in the world that your check has bounced and no one gives you credit ever again.

During the time of Diego Portales, people in Chile who travelled from Val-paraiso to Vina del Mar to spend the summers, prepared themselves for a lengthy...